


Morrigan's Son

by Goethicite



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: 5 Things, Broken Promises, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence, Politics, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 21:06:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/602074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goethicite/pseuds/Goethicite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four times Tony broke his promise, and one time he kept it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Morrigan's Son

Tony Stark is a lying liar who lies. Ask anyone. Ask Rhodey. Ask Pepper. You could ask Jarvis, but the old man is long gone. Tony was very convincing when he told the man, who was closer than Howard to being a father, that he didn't mind him leaving. So when Tony Stark says, "I'm not making weapons anymore," the world is probably right to be skeptical.

The first time is for Rhodey, because Iron Man doesn't count. Iron Man is the physical extension of Tony, like JARVIS is mental (and emotional) augmentation. It's after Hammer's in custody. Pepper sends Tony home before he can offend law enforcement. Rhodey comes too, still in the War Machine armor. He's scared, but he and Tony never talk about that sort of thing. Even though Rhodey spends the week off after his tours on Tony's couch, drinking Tony's booze, and playing with the latest and greatest StarkTech, it's not them to actually talk. Tony is well aware it's fucked up, thanks.

Rhodey's weapons failed. War Machine betrayed him. It was actually Hammer that fucked up, but Tony's not going to demand logic from trauma like that. Glass houses and all. So Tony takes apart War Machine as Rhodey drinks beer and watches. Then Tony sits down with a tablet and reinvents ever last piece of artillery Hammer installed. He makes them sleeker, more deadly, puts more firepower in an already frightening weapon. JARVIS doesn't say anything when Tony gives the order to fabricate the kind of guns he swore he'd never build again.

Then Tony puts War Machine back together. He repaints it, loads the weapons with careful hands, and resets all the electronics with the new manual override. Rhodey sees everything. And when Tony's done pushing cartridges he'd promised himself he'd stop making into guns that should have never left his head, Rhodey is just drunk enough to pull Tony down on the couch and hold him while he shakes.

Tony presses his face into Rhodey's shoulder and doesn't think about Yinsen. Because Yinsen's dead. Rhodey's alive. And Tony just broke a promise to a dead man to make sure he'd stay that way.

The second time is for Natasha. People make the mistake of thinking Tony works on everything coming out of StarkIndustries. This isn't correct. Tony has a staff of engineers at various levels doing ninety-nine percent of the grunt work. So guns really weren't Tony's thing even before Afghanistan. He could build them, use them, and knew them intimately as he knew every piece of tech his company made, but he didn't make them. He made things that killed thousands or hundreds of thousands, not bullet spitters. That was the duty of several peon engineers who had long ago been reassigned to stress-testing body armor. Tony machines four guns by hand before he feels comfortable asking Natasha for her arsenal.

She stares at him for a long time, green eyes icy. He pretends he's not shaky and nauseous at the thought, but he built an empire in blood more successfully than the men who made her guns. Really, he was better qualified to arm his teammate. She gives him everything in two batches. One after the other so she's never unarmed.

He keeps the frames if they're decent. Otherwise, he rebuilds them to look the same but better made. Every other part he makes with his own two hands, no fabrication from the bots. The armors are one thing. Natasha's guns are death, pure and clean. He doesn't want his bots touching them. Each trigger, each slide, each barrel he builds specifically for her. The pull weight, the tightness of the slide, the angle of the grip are all carefully calibrated from any footage he could find or hack from SHIELD's database.

It takes him three days. He doesn't sleep or eat, because the nightmares make it impossible anyways. When he's done, he walks away. Natasha doesn't try to say thank you. Thank God. Though she squeezes his shoulder the next time she sees him. So he knows she found the only part of the gun he actually smiled while doing. He'd worked the Widow design discretely into every grip, sculpting the molds and casting the plastic. It's understated, elegant, and lethal. He'd done it because people only saw her beauty or the blood on her hands, never the exquisiteness of the weapon. And she deserves to be seen.

Tony volunteers the third time even though he knows it’s a bad idea. Clint's bitching about the arrows R&D made for him. Tony makes Clint's bows and almost all of the trick arrows Clint uses. So he immediately barges into the conversation demanding to know why Clint would go back to those idiots. He tells Clint he'll make the arrows and ignores Natasha's 'suggestion' he let it drop.

Clint comes down to the lab so they can do their thing. Except, usually, when Tony's kitting out Clint it's full of bad jokes, grins, and cackling. Clint's almost grim as he relates to Tony a very specific type of arrow. It's thin, made of materials meant to render it almost invisible when in motion. It vanishes when the job is done. The specifications make it clear what Tony carefully casts by hand, because this is no different than Natasha's bullets. Dummy squeaks nervously the whole time as Tony fits the artificial feathers (actually polycarbon blades) on the tail to stabilize each arrow. The bots are used to helping with the Hawkeye gear.

Tony gives Clint two dozen, self-destructing, camouflaged arrows. Then he makes Clint promise to ask for new batches in carefully staggered intervals. That way Tony can never look at the television and see the pattern he helped create in the funeral of some head of state.

Clint's always good about that. Half the time, Tony doesn't know whether the archer needs new ones for practice or because he used them for work. Occasionally though, Tony will look at the news and know in his gut that the arrows he made found their targets. It's a sin he'll swallow with scotch and Clint's company, because he'd rather have Clint's friendship and a guilt complex than a clear conscience.

After Natasha, updating a Colt 1911 for Steve is child's play. Tony doesn't think about it. Or the fact the last person to do this was his father. He doesn't think about it so hard, he barely remembers doing it. So he just smiles and nods blankly when Steve says thank you.

Steve looks concerned at the almost socially acceptable response. Natasha distracts him though, before anything can come of it. Tony can't help but wonder if Steve really understands why the papers still use the 'Merchant of Death' moniker. See, Tony knows that World War II was nothing as clean and heroic as in the books. Howard Stark was a mouthy, talkative drunk. (Some things are genetic.)

Howard had started the StarkIndustries policy of actually field-testing weapons personally. He'd been, as Tony is, too important to make the guns, but he'd gone out to the front lines to see them in action and brought the improvements back to the lab. (Why do you think a billionaire, genius, weapons designer was in the middle of an active war zone in the first place? Demoing the Jericho could have been done at any one of the rural Stark weapons testing facilities.) And, like Tony, Howard had seen war up close and splattering blood on his face. Tony deals though. Not always well, but he deals. Howard drank and told his seven year old son the truths that sounded more like horror stories. Steve lived Howard's stories.

Still, Steve didn't live Hiroshima or Nagasaki or the Cold War arms race. He never saw the great Howard Stark screaming drunkenly at ghosts, or Maria fading slowly as she tried to hold her family together. Steve had slept through a desert catching fire yet again and eating all the civilians in its path. The fire was still burning, but Steve had only seen it on the news. Tony's war isn't Steve's or his father's. It's a bush fire that will never be contained to the inferno of a highrise. Tony is the post-Nixon product of a disillusioned generation who turned his apathy into cash via things that killed people. Of course no one is going to believe he's changed, and they'd be right.

Fury's worried that Tony's a misstep away from super-villainy. This isn't an incorrect premise. Doom's made Tony the offer before. Except, Tony doesn't really want to run the world. He's terrible at running things. If he took over the world, he'd just have to turn his benevolent dictatorship over to Pepper like he has his company.

Tony's always been fire-eater. His brain is full of crazy, brilliant, beautiful things he brings to life. But, if you build a tower too tall, it'll be destroyed by the wind. That's just engineering. Pepper was the common-sense that let Tony build until any more building would cause harm. Her armor, the Rescue armor, isn't a weapon. Really. No more than a baseball bat or chef's knife is. Anything can become a weapon with the will behind it.

The Rescue armor is exactly what it sounds like. It's kitted out with every kind of scanner Tony can build. If there's a breath, a heart beat, a chance in hell, Rescue will find you. JARVIS is incorporated into the Rescue armor just as thoroughly as he is in Iron Man. Specialized cutting torches, small, shaped charges, fire resistant foam, and more physical strength than Iron Man are just the tip of the many things Tony fits beneath the slim, red and silver armor. She's a fire truck, an ambulance, a last hope for the helpless with the lines of Ferrari and wit sharp enough to cut trapped man free.

Rescue is everything Iron Man isn't. So when Pepper puts it on, the bots cheep happily as Tony's heart swells with pride in a job well done. They'd all worked on it. Dummy shining the plates. You holding the solder in place, and Butterfingers detailing the paint jobs. JARVIS had written the flourishes of the interface himself.

The mask closes not with the clang of the Iron Man armor but a soft, chiming ring of tuned metal on metal. It's not a threat. It's a promise. Even the voice is carefully modulated to be genderless but soothing. Tony calls it the 'Mother Thing' voice, perfectly pitched to always be heard but never be loud.

Rescue says, "It's perfect, Tony. Thank you." Her voice rings through the labs like a silver bell.

Tony grins. "I know. I built it."

**Author's Note:**

> Unbetaed piece. It always struck me how it's assumed Tony equips his teammates, even though he claims he doesn't make weapons anymore. I just wanted to explore how he justifies it to himself without ever trying to make himself a hero.


End file.
